Cradles of Civilisation
Ancient History is the first of the major chronological divisions of world history, and lasted from about 3500 BC until about 776 BC. It began with the end of Prehistory, when human potential and the necessity for conflict or cooperation allowed for the emergence of the first civilisations in what are known as ''The Cradles of Civilisation. It then ends with the first Olympic Games, which marks the beginning of the Classical Ancient Greece. Civilisation has been one of the great accelerators of man-made change. It seems to have arisen independently, or with a minimum of influence, at least six separate times: Mesopotamia in Iraq, the River Nile in Egypt, the Indus River in India, the Yellow River in China, and twice in the Americas in Mexico and Peru. Most, but not all, developed in river valleys which gave the inhabitants considerable advantages: a reliable source of water for drinking and agriculture; additional food from fertile soil and fish; ease of transportation; and flood defence and irrigation projects forced people to work cooperatively. From these few flickering Cradles of Civilisation, others were slowly sparked through interaction, stimulation, and inheritance. Civilisation would allow the two great innovations of Ancient History to flourish: systems of writing and organized religion. History The Potential for Civilisation Sometime around 4000 BC, all the essential building blocks of civilisation were beginning to fall into place. The development of agriculture, the cultivation of crops and domestication of animals, permitted humans to settle in denser and more permanent compounds that gradually became towns. Towns became centres of trade, absorbing agricultural products, and in return providing manufactured goods and a degree of military protection. Metal working developed in copper, bronze, and gold for tools and ornamentation, which in turn stimulated far-flung trade networks. As towns developed complex economic and social structures, sophisticated language and proto-writing systems were needed to facilitate administration, to express ideas, and to preserve information. Towns developed a distinct culture and complex religious practices, for religion has deep roots stretching far back into prehistory, hinted at in Neanderthal burial practices and elaborate cave paintings. For a long as we know there has been at Jericho (modern day Palestine) a never failing spring that feeds what is still a sizable oasis. No double it explains why people have lived there on and off for more than ten thousand years. Farmers clustered about it in late prehistory, and before 6000 BC it had great water-tanks, probably for irrigation, which suggest provision for a considerable population. There was a massive stone tower which was part of elaborate defences long kept in repair; clearly its inhabitants thought they had something worth defending. At around the same time, brick building was going on in Çatalhöyük in Turkey, a site only slightly younger and home to some seven thousand people. For all that, this was not the beginning of true civilisation. Yet in certain areas of the world around 4000 BC farming villages existed in such density that they provided the agricultural surplus upon which civilisation could eventually be raised. Civilisation in Mesopotamia The best case for the first appearance of something that is recognisably civilisation has been made by Mesopotamia, the seven-hundred-mile-long land formed by the two river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, known as the Fertile Crescent. Sumerian Civilisation (3300-2000) had deep roots. In prehistory, the region was thickly studded with farming towns and villages because of the wonderfuly rich soil; it must have been much easier to grow crops there than elsewhere, but only if irrigation was managed collectively. Despite the richness of her farming, the region had few mineral resources to speak of, so Mesopotamia was forced to trade, and a trade networks over long distances can be traced far back into prehistory. The people of different towns in Mesopotamia long shared a way of life not very different from that of their neighbours. Each grew around a local temple, which acted as the communities common storehouse and the centre of economic activity. Sumeria was fundamentally an agrarian society, but was also able supported specialised labour such as tool makers, weavers, shoemaker, healers, artisan, and potters. Sizeable towns appear, with several being true city-states with tens-of-thousands of inhabitants by 3500 BC; one city recorded 36,000 males. To meet the administrative demands of ever growing cities, the temple priestly rulers developed a system of symbols to record economic transactions, which gradually became more abstract and stylized, until there emerged the world's first system of writing; the Cuneiform Script. The Sumerians are also credited with the world's oldest known literature in the world, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was almost certainly a real person, the king of Uruk, the first city to dominate all the others in Sumeria. He supposedly built the great six-miles-long city walls of Uruk, dating from a little after 3000 BC. To the modern reader of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the most striking tales is of a great flood that obliterates mankind save for one favoured family; undeniably paralleling the Bible story of Noah’s Ark. There is a fatalistic and sombre mood to the Epic and indeed to the Sumerian polytheistic religion. This may be due to the difficulty of life in Sumeria, where the soil was rich, but, unlike the River Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates were prone to unpredictable and violent flooding. They can hardly have derived much comfort from their beliefs, for they seem to have seen life-after-death as a gloomy sad place, where the dead "live in darkness, eat clay, and are clothed like birds with wings." The Sumerians are credited with numerous "firsts": Sumeria was the first true urban civilization; they were the first to mass-produced pottery on potter's wheels; the oldest known standard recipe for brewing beer; the number seven had some special religious meaning and gave us our seven day week; the Sumerian counting system was based on the number sixty and gave us our sixty minute hour etc. The separate city-states of Sumeria were first united some time around 2800 BC. Uruk often dominated, but at times it was eclipsed by the neighbouring city of Ur, famous as the original home of the Prophet Abraham. Ur is also notable for the hundred-foot high Great Ziggurat; remembered in the Bible as the Tower of Babel. The royal cemetery at Ur has revealed an astonishing level of sophistication in objects dating to around 2500 BC: a beautifully sculpted wood and gold goat; exquisitely ornamented musical instruments; and copper spears and helmets. The incessant vying for ascendancy between Ur and Uruk rendered Sumeria vulnerable to external conquerors. Sumeria had expanded into neighbouring areas populated by nomadic Semitic peoples, and it was a usurper of Semitic origin who seized power in Ur in 2270 BC, Sargon I '''(d. 2284 BC). From Ur, he gradually conquered all the Sumerian cities, before founding a capital of his own at Akkad. The Akkadian Dynasty (2270–2083 BC) saw a shift in Sumeria from the dominance of one city-state over the others, to a true centralised state, as well as from priestly-rulers to warrior-kings. In fact, Sargon could be said to have established the first Mesopotamian Empire, with influence stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean coast of Syria. The Akkadian period also demonstrates the flexibility of the Sumerian writing system, which had to be adapted to meet the needs of the Semitic language. The empire established by Sargon lasted for almost 200 years, before slowly disintegrating, and being overrun by tribes from the north. Unlike the slightly later Egyptian Civilisation where an enduring stable society was established, Mesopotamia would be characterised by constant warfare and a succession of shifting empires. Over the next 1500 years or more, Mesopotamia went through many periods of chaos, where small independent city-states struggling for power or for survival. There were also times of imperial stability, when centralised control was re-established. Notable among these empires were the Babylonians (1792-1600 BC), famed for Hammurabi's written law code, which for the first time established in law everything from the wages of an ox driver, to the fact that the punishment for taking an eye should be having an eye taken. The turmoil of Mesopotamia made it much more fertile ground for innovation than stable Egypt: the Babylonians brought mathematics, astronomy, and science to their early peaks; the Hyksos were the first to make effective use of horse-archers and chariots in warfare; and the Hittites were the first civilization with iron smelting technology. The chaos of Mesopotamia was eventually brought to an end by the rise of [[Greek Foundation of Western Culture#Greco-Persian Wars|Achaemenid Persia]] (550-330 BC). Meanwhile, by 1900 BC overseas contact with both Mesopotamia and Egypt had already influenced Europe's own first civilisation, Minoan Crete (1900-1450 BC). Civilisation in Egypt For thousands of years after it had died, the richness of the physical remains of Ancient Egypt have fascinated men’s minds and stirred their imaginations; even the Ancient Greeks were bemused by the legendary occult wisdom of a land where gods were half men, half beasts, and even today people still waste their time trying to discern a supernatural significance in the arrangement of the pyramids. After 6000 BC, with the drying of the Sahara, the various hunter-gatherer communities that lived in the territory around the River Nile, were increasingly confined to the immediate river valley. The Nile was regular and benign, making for one of the safest and richest agricultural areas in the world. Each summer, the river flooded the fields at precisely the same time, and left behind remarkably nutrient-rich silt for planting season. It was also easily navigable, the river flowing from south to north, while the prevailing wind blows in the opposite direction. Through working together on the laborious task of irrigation, Egyptian communities could create big food surpluses with relative ease. The event that the Ancient Egyptians themselves pointed to as the beginning of '''Egyptian Civilisation (3100-1075 BC) was the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt into a single kingdom in 3100 BC, by Pharaoh Menes. He was the founder of the first of thirty Egyptian dynasties, that spanned over two thousand years; an example of social continuity rivalled in human history only by China. Egyptian history can most easily be visualised in five big divisions: three of these are called respectively the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom; and are separated by two other periods called the First Intermediate and Second Intermediate. Very roughly, the three Kingdoms are periods of success or at least of consolidated government, and the two Intermediate stages are interludes of weakness and disruption from external and internal crises. It was the Old Kingdom (3100-2155) pharaohs of the 3rd Dynasties who firmly established order and stability along the Nile, as well as almost all the essential elements of Egyptian Civilisation. All power was centred in the pharaoh, who was considered a god: he owned all the land, controlled the irrigation system, and received all the surplus from crops produced. This surplus supported a large corps of specialists: administrators, priests, scribes, artisans, and merchants. The pyramids remain today to show the remarkable degree of political and social control that the pharaohs had over the population. They began under Djoser, the greatest pharaoh of the 3rd Dynasty, who commissioned the Step Pyramid at Saqqara in about 2620 BC. Between about 2550 and 2470 BC, Djoser's funerary example was taken to even more elaborate lengths by his successors at Giza: the most famous, the Great Sphinx, was build in approximately 2500 BC for the pharaoh Khafra; and the largest, the Great Pyramid, was built around 2560 BC for the pharaoh Khufu. Pyramid construction provided employment for peasants during the months when the Nile flooded, but it was primarily an act of religious faith in the pharaoh, on whom the security and prosperity of Egypt depended. It was also during the Old Kingdom that the practice of mummification began, to preserve the pharaoh for the afterlife and judgement before Osiris; if the verdict was favourable he would live in Osiris’s kingdom, if not he was abandoned to a monstrous destroyer, part crocodile and part hippopotamus. Our knowledge of the detailed history of this vast stretch of time is fragmented: Egyptian raids far to the south into Nubia; shipments of cedar arriving from Lebanon; and mining operations undertaken in the copper rich Sinai region. However, the pharaohs of the 6th Dynasty lacked the vigour of their predecessors, and their rule was followed by a century of anarchy and civil-war. Stability was restored in the Middle Kingdom (2052-1786), under the pharaoh Mentuhotep II (d. 1995 BC), with some distinct changes: the capital was moved from Memphis to Thebes; and Amun, god of the sky, took over and eventually merged with the sun-god Ra as head of the Egyptian polytheistic pantheon. The Middle Kingdom pharaohs also put greater emphasis on their role as watchful shepherds of the people, promoting the welfare of the downtrodden. No longer was the nation's wealth expended on huge pyramids, but on more functional public works. Moreover, the lower classes were granted the right to have their own bodies mummified, like the pharaohs and nobility. This period was also notable for the first serious effort to conquer Nubia (modern day Sudan), which had long been of great importance to the trade in luxuries, especially gold, ivory, ebony, leopard skins, and ostrich feathers. After four centuries the Middle Kingdom fell to foreigner invaders from the Near East, the Hyksos, of whom very little is known except that they enjoyed superior military technology including bronze weapons, horse archers with compound bows, and chariots. Eventually, a powerful family from Thebes grew strong enough to drive the intruders north, until Ahmose I finally expelled them from Egypt completely, and established the New Kingdom (1554-1075). This period provides the bulk of the art, sculpture, artefacts and architecture, other than the pyramids, for which Ancient Egypt is famous. At Thebes the great temples of Karnak and Luxor were created or greatly enhanced, as well as the tombs of the Valley of the Kings. With the Egyptians having assimilated the military technology of the Hyksos, the New Kingdom was also an era of conquest and empire. By this stage in the history of the eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, Hittite dominated Mesopotamia and Mycenaean Greece can almost be seen as one unified coherent system, with diplomacy, wars for regional dominance, and regular trade stretching as far away as mineral rich Spain and the Neolithic societies of the European interior. The first powerful Egyptian ruler was Thutmose I (d. 1493 BC), who vigorously extended the Egyptian empire, south to retake Nubia, and north as far as Syria and the Euphrates. His daughter Hatshepsut (d. 1458 BC) provided a rare exception in that she took the throne herself, first as regent for her stepson and then as pharaoh in her own right; she appeared on monuments in full male attire wearing a false beard. She ruled as forcefully as any man, expanding Egypt influence predominantly through trade. Probably Egypt's greatest conqueror was her son, Thutmose III (d. 1425 BC), who led Egypt's army on seventeen campaigns as far as Syria; he’s sometimes called the "Napoleon of Egypt". Native princes of Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria were left on their thrones as vassals, but their sons were taken to Egypt as hostages to be educated or indoctrinated into the Egyptian way of life. Even so, the name most commonly associated today with the pharaohs is Ramses II (d. 1213 BC). This is partly because he commissions one of the best known images of Egypt, the colossal statue of himself at Abu Simbel. He ruled for sixty-six years, during which Egypt was calm and prosperous. He resolved Egypt's long struggle with the Hittites in Syria, and completed building projects like Karnak. As a result of Ramses' resounding success, members of the 20th dynasty all took his name, from Ramses III to Ramses XI. These last Ramses faced new threats. From the north came the mysterious Sea Peoples; almost certainly the same people as the Philistines. Meanwhile, Libya and Nubia both re-asserted their independence. Amid mounting anarchy, the pillaging of tombs for their immense treasures became common-place. When Ramses XI died in about 1075 BC, Egypt was again divided into Upper and Lower kingdoms. Tough times lay ahead. Egypt would first loss her independence to the Libyans in 945 BC, then the Assyrians, then the Persians, and finally to Alexander the Great. When looking back at Egyptian civilisation, for all the spectacular heritage of her monuments and her sheer staying-power, it is difficult not to sense an ultimate sterility at the heart of this glittering tour-de-force. Colossal resources of labour were amassed under the direction of outstanding civil servants, and the end results were the creation of the greatest tombstones the world has ever seen. Craftsmanship of exquisite quality was employed, and their masterpieces were grave-goods. A highly literate elite utilised a complex and subtle language, but contributed no philosophy or literature to compare with others, like the Jewish people. Only in papyrus and medicine is there indisputable originality, and they can be traced back at least as far as the Old Kingdom. Egypt's civilisation was never successfully spread abroad, and in the end made little permanent difference to the world. On the banks of the River Nile a grateful and passive people gathered the richness it bestows, and set aside what they thought necessary for the real business of living: the proper preparation for death. Late Bronze Age Collapse in the Near East The period after about 1150 BC brought hard times not just for the Egyptians. The so-called Late Bronze Age Collapse saw cultural collapse all over the eastern Mediterranean, including Mycenaean Greece and Hittite Anatolia (modern day Turkey and Syria). Many speculate that this collapse was caused by warfare, with violent eruptions such as the mysterious Sea Peoples, as well as the gradual emergence of iron weapons from around 1200 BC. Other theories include a series of violent earthquakes in the region, or widespread famine brought about by the notably drier period. This bronze Dark Ages gradually receded between 911-605 BC, with the rise of two new competing civilisations in the region; Classical Greece in the Aegean, and the Ancient Persians from Iran. Civilisation in India Yet another great river valley civilisation emerged in north-western India, on the banks of the Indus River. By 3200 BC, the length of the river was dotted with some 1,500 agricultural communities, living in mud-brick settlements within protective walls. By 2500 BC, it is clear that a highly-developed civilisation had emerged, based around the two largest cities, Mohenjo-Daro on the lower Indus, and at Harappa further upstream; the civilisation has been given the name the Harappan Civilisation (2500-1900). Everything we know about the Harappans comes from archaeology, for although they had a system of writing, despite many attempts the script has not yet been deciphered. The lack of longer inscriptions suggests it was almost certainly limited to trading and administration. Life in the Indus valley seems to have been highly organised: cities had dense, multi-story homes built with uniformly sized baked bricks; streets were laid out in a uniform and well-planned rectangular grid pattern; most homes were connected to a centralised sewage system with inspection holes for maintenance; and granaries were designed with bays to receive carts, and ducts to circulate air and dry the grain. They seem to have placed an important emphasis on bathing; the largest public building in Mohenjo-Daro was not a temple or a palace, but a great public bathhouse known as the Great Bath. The local production included three crops of great significance in the subsequent history of India; cotton, rice, and sesame oil. We also have some evidence that the Harappans traded as far away as Mesopotamia, because they marked goods with distinctive seals featuring animals and monsters which have been found there. Around 1900 BCE signs of a gradual decline began to emerge although the reasons are not entirely clear: writing started to disappear, standardized weights and measures for trade fell out of use, and some cities were gradually abandoned. It seems to have ended completely by about 1750 BC, which coincides with a violent intrusion into northwest India by the Aryans. Little is known about the Aryans except that they were a nomadic people of the Eurasian steppes, fighting with bow-and-arrow from light and speedy chariots. Their advance proved hard to resist, especially for the Harappans who seemed to have lived remarkably peacefully; almost no weapons have been found by archaeologists. The Aryans brought two more of the fundamental building blocks of Indian culture: its society was rigidly divided into three groups (priests, warriors and peasants), the foundation of the Indian Caste system; and their holy text was the Vedas, the beginning of a religious tradition that would evolve into the complex religion of Hinduism. The Vedas are a collection of prayers, mythological accounts, and poems considered to be sacred, and supposedly the revelations of ancient sages after intense meditation. After first settling in the Punjab, Aryan influence gradually spreads eastwards along the Ganges and south down the coast of western India. A succession of small independent kingdoms developed, usually fighting with each other, and occasionally coalescing into larger groups, then breaking up again, for the process to be repeated. By about 600 BC, the two most powerful kingdoms in India were neighbours on the Ganges; the Kosala, and Magadha. Both were rigid societies, where the Brahman priesthood wielding considerably power through their knowledge of the Vedas and their control of rituals. During the 6th century BC, this rigidity provided an impulse for religious reform, resulting in the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism. By the 4th century, the Magadha had emerged as the dominant power in the whole of northern India, with a capital city at Pataliputra (modern Patna). However, any chance of stability was rudely interrupted by the dramatic arrival of Alexander the Great. Civilisation in China The most striking fact of China’s history is that it has gone on for so long. China has had a continuing experience of civilization rivalled in duration only by that of Ancient Egypt. Somehow, at a very early date, it crystallised a Chinese language and a share cultural identity which were to endure, and government as a single unit has long been taken to be normal, in spite of periods of grievous division from internal or external crises. At first sight China does not suggest much that makes for unity. Above all, northern and southern China are very different: the north is scorching and arid In summer while the south is humid and prone to flooding; the north looks bare and dustblown in the winter, while the south is always green; and the north was prone to incursions and stimulation from Central Asia, while the south was more isolated until the emergence of Indian Ocean Trade in the 8th century. These two cultural zones meet and mix on the Yellow River, the central of China's three great river valleys; along with the Yangtze and the Huai. It is here that the story of civilization in China, when sometime about 1600 BC, a tribe called the Shang, which enjoyed the military advantage of the chariot, imposed herself on her neighbours over a sizable stretch of the Yellow River valley. At the heart of the Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BC) was the city of An-yang and a society in which human sacrifice played a significant role. The area they controlled was tiny, perhaps 200km across, yet the argument for the Shang as the first Chinese dynasty relies on one crucial fact; their system of writing in pictorial characters bears a remarkable similarity to modern written Chinese, often with only minor modifications. They left an extraordinary archive of the questions asked by the Shang rulers of an oracle, in the method of divination known as Scapulimancy. A priest applied a heated bronze point to a polished strip of bone, and the answer was revealed by the pattern of the cracks that appeared; the priest then wrote on the bone the question asked and answer given. These fortune-tellers helped them make decisions of all kinds: from matchmaking to having children, from travel to financial decisions, and even on whether to make war or peace. Several of the inscriptions mention human sacrifices to a silkworm goddess, usually prisoners of war; the earliest known Chinese silk fragments have been carbon-dated to about 2850 BC. In addition to their writing, the Shang introduced other elements of great significance in the subsequent history of China, such as chopsticks and the worship of ancestors. In Shang society, ancestor worship was limited to the king and a few noble families, but it later spread throughout the Chinese community. By the 11th century, a new power had been established in China; the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256). The Zhou were a frontier kingdom to the west of An-yang, between civilisation and the barbarian tribes. After forming a confederation of neighbouring states, they overwhelmed the Shang rulers, and established a new capital at Xi'an. From here, the Zhou controlled all of central China, through a network of subordinate petty-kingdoms, in a system akin to European feudalism. By 771 BC, the Zhou had themselves been driven east by barbarian tribes and rebellious petty-kingdoms, and re-established their capital from Xi'an to Loyang. Gradually, the role of the Zhou rulers became merely ceremonial and religious, and China was characterised almost constant conflict for the next five hundred years. By the 5th century BC, the Spring and Autumn period had reduced the hundreds of petty-kingdoms to just seven. Then over the next two and a half centuries of the Warring States period one would emerged to dominate the others; the 3rd century Qin Dynasty. Civilisation in the Americas The first recognised civilisation in the Americas appeared on the Mexican Gulf coast, in the humid lowlands of southern Veracruz. The mysterious Olmec civilisation (1200-400 BC) is best-known for the awesome Olmec Heads, of which there are seventeen confirmed examples from four different sites. They portray grim, pug-nosed warriors, wearing curious helmets. The evidence of their sculptures and other artifacts indicate that: Olmec civilisation had a mastery of stone and were able to support talented artisans; traded widely for jade, obsidian, and other luxuries; and were capable of a high degree of social organization, moving stones weighing up to 40 tons over long distance. They also lived in thrall to fearsome deities, with the Olmec gods, such as the feathered serpent, persisting right into the pre-Columbian era. The Olmec civilisation ended violently, but was followed by the Teotihuacán civilisation (100 BC-550 AD). At its peak, the city had a population of about 125,000, the centre of probably the biggest pre-Columbian North American empire. The Teotihuacáns continued the brutal severity of the Olmec sculptural tradition, and contributed two of the other defining characteristics of Meso-American culture. Firstly, the pyramids, with some such as Teotihuacán Cholula and Monte Albán over 30 meters high and dominating the surrounding area, as powerfully as the priestly rulers dominated the community. And secondly, it is also probable that they engaged in the ritual of human sacrifice, a practice that would reach its grisly peak in the Aztec civilisation. The most brilliant of the classic civilisations of Meso-America was that of the Mayan civilisation (250-900 AD), of eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and western Honduras. Much of this region is jungle, and perhaps this inaccessibility meant that it outlasted all rivals in a succession of violent upheavals. The Maya attained heights of artistic and architectural expression, and of learning in astronomy, mathematics and astrology, which were never to be surpassed. Of all the civilisations, the Maya also made the greatest use of writing in hieroglyphs, used almost exclusively for either calculations connected with the calendar and astronomy, and the listing of rulers and their conquests. Thus the elites preserved writing for their own privileged purposes, while denying their societies the liberating magic of literacy. The other great centre of civilisation in the Americas was in Peru, where the Chavín civilisation (900-250 BC) flourished throughout much of the highlands and the coast. The salient feature of the Chavín culture was the repeated representation of a stylized jaguar or puma face with prominently religious overtones. Most importantly, this period represented the greatest early development in weaving, pottery, agriculture, metalwork, religion and architecture. After the decline of Chavín, over the next thousand or so years, several cultures became locally important: the Paracas Culture (800-100 BC) produced cotton and wool textiles of fine quality; the Moche Culture (100-800 AD) produced pottery from press molds and were the ambitious builders of the Huaca del Sol stepped pyramid; and Nazca Culture (450–550 AD) made the enigmatic giant designs in the desert known as the Nazca Lines. There remains one other remarkable fact about Peruvian civilization. In recent years archaeologists have revealed the existence of far earlier complex societies known as the Norte Chico, that dates from around 3000 BC; thus contemporary with the beginning of civilization in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The pattern of civilsation in the Americas had been set by its emergence in Mexico and Peru, and it endure all the way down to the fatal arrival of Christopher Columbus in the 1492 AD. A succession of highly developed cultures, all strongly influenced by their predecessors, in the same two limited regions. When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they would find that the Aztec Civilisation in Mexico and Inca Civilisation based in Peru. Both were highly organized and complex cultures, but had developed much slower than Europe. The Aztec and Inca's lacked many features long taken for granted in the Old World: wheeled vehicles; animals for riding and ploughing; advanced knowledge of metalwork; and literacy beyond the rulers and priests. There were a number of crucial factors in this. First, the Americas developed in isolation, with even overland contact between Mexico and Peru posing pretty impenetrable natural obstacles; neither culture was strong seafarers. Secondly, neither cultural region had animals suitable to herding or as draft-animals; Peru did domesticate llamas, but their mountain habitat was not best suited for wheeled transports. Finally, writing remained the preserve of the elites, thus denying their societies the liberating magic of literacy. The Rest of the World Meanwhile outside the Cradles of Civilisation, remarkable things had been done by the end of Ancient History around 776 BC. Numerous impressive civilisations had been stimulated: the Kingdom of Kush in modern day Sudan, Africa’s first civilisation outside Egypt; Minoan and Mycenaeans of the Aegean who would provide the Ancient Greeks with so many of their legends; and the Phoenicians, an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean, and whose phonetic alphabet was adopted by the Greeks, thus becoming the ancestors of most modern alphabets. However, when they are given their due weight, they lack the complexity and enduring contribution of the ancient civilisations. Meanwhile, the light of civilisation had barely touched most regions of the world, and this include Western Europe. This uncomfortable fact has led some enthusiasts to claim its undeniably striking Megaliths and tribal Celtic culture as another seat of “early civilisation”, almost as if its people were some sort of depressed class needing historical rehabilitation. In truth, in terms of the history of the world, ancient Europe was largely an irrelevance when compared to great civilisations that rose and fell in the river valleys of the Near East and beyond. Organised Religion The Ancient era was a great foundation period for religions. Older faiths were being formalised thanks to the invention of writing, while a wave of great religious leaders between the 9th and 2nd century were providing new ways of thinking: Siddartha Gautama or Buddha (563-483 BC); Parshvanatha (9th century BC) and Mahavira (6th century BC) the co-founders of Jainism; Confucius (551–479); and Laozi (6th–5th century BC) the founder of Taoism. These newer faiths contended with older religions like Hinduism, Judaism, and various pagan creeds. It's extremely difficult to say when and how the complex religious tradition of Hinduism began. The tradition itself maintains that it’s a timeless and has always existed. It roots certainly go very deep indeed; Shiva, one of the key focus of modern Hindu devotion, can be traced to many Prehistory fertility cults. Shiva joined hundreds of local gods and goddesses to form the Hindu pantheon still worshipped today. Historians generally hold that Classic Hinduism crystallised very gradually in the first century BC, as a fusion of Aryan, Harappan and other Indian traditions. At its core is the Aryan holy text the Vedas, which was compiled in Sanskrit about 1500 BC. Hindu theologians considered the texts revelations by ancient sages after intense meditation, that have been more carefully preserved since ancient times. The Vedas was, like Homer, the eventual written form of a body of oral tradition, whose sanctity made its memorization in exact form essential. At the heart of Hinduism lies a world view in which all things are linked in an all-embracing web of being. Through action in life, souls might pass through different forms in this immense whole; move up or down between castes, or even between the human and animal worlds. The Hindu Brahman priestly class enjoyed considerably power and privilege through their knowledge of the Vedas and their control of rituals. To kill a Brahman soon became the gravest of crimes; even kings could not always contend with their powers. During the 6th century BC, this rigidity provided an impulse for religious reform. One very successful cult was Jainism, a creation of the teacher Mahavira who, among other things, preached an avoidance of taking any form of life, and that all living things share with mankind the possession of a soul. This obviously made agriculture or animal husbandry impossible, so Jains tended to become merchants, with the result that in modern times the Jain community is one of the wealthiest in India. But much the most important of the innovating systems was Buddhism. Siddhartha Gautama was not a Brahman, but a prince of the warrior class. Followed a pattern not uncommon in India at this time, Gautama rejected the privileged life into which he had been born, to seek a more personal religion. For six years he followed an ascetic life until he realised that living under such harsh constraints was not helping him achieve spiritual enlightenment; the Middle Way. After several days meditating under a pipal tree at the village of Buddh Gaya in Bihar, Siddartha Gautama achieved a moment of pure enlightenment and became the Buddha or "the enlightened one". Afterwards, he propound to his disciples an austere and ethical doctrine called the Eightfold Path, whose ultimate aim was to attain the blessed state of nirvana, freedom from the endless cycle of rebirth and transmigration. The Buddha apparently had great practical and organizing ability, establishing communities of Buddhist monks, which gave his work an institutional form which that outlived him. While Hinduism would ultimately be the victor, and Buddhism would dwindle to a minority belief in India, it was to become the most widespread religion in Asia and a potent force in world history. We can glean far more about the history of Judaism thanks to the Old Testament. The people who would become the Jews, were just one of many nomadic Semitic tribes, probably originating in Arabia who had spread to all parts of Mesopotamia about 3000 BC.The Hebrews initially worshipped many gods, making sacrifices to them in order to bring good weather and good fortune. But they eventually developed a religion centred around an idea that there is only one true God. According to Genesis, Abraham was the founding father of the second key concept to their religion; the Covenant, the special relationship between the Jewish people and God. God told Abraham to leave his home at Ur, and lead his people to a Canaan where he promised to make them a great nation; scholars put the likely date at about 1800 BC. Abraham's grandson Jacob provides the origin of the tribal division of the Hebrews. God renewed the Covenant with Jacob, giving him the new name, Israel; the twelve tribes of Israel descend from his twelve sons. Famine caused the Jews to move south to Egypt; it was probably in Egypt that the Jews adopted the custom circumcision, which was common there, as a symbol of their Covenant with God. In Egypt, Abraham's people sank to the status of slaves, until Moses brought them out of Egypt through the miracles of the Ten Plagues and parting of the Red Sea. Moses gave the Jews a new sense of unity during the journey back to Canaan, with another renewal of the Covenant in the Ten Commandments; another key concept to their religion that God demands moral righteousness and social justice. In Canaan a long and fierce struggle ensued against the powerful Philistines, until the new Kingdom of Israel was established under Saul from about 1050 BC. Despite internal conflict and continued struggles with the Philistines, Israel flourished under David with a capital established at Jerusalem. However, old tensions simmered between the northern and southern Jewish tribes, and after Soloman the kingdom split into Judah and Israel. In the northern kingdom of Israel, worship of God became associated with a local bull cult, the Golden Calf, which invited God’s wrath in the form of an invasion by Assyria in 722 BC. A century and a half later, in 586 BC, Judah came to an even more violent and sudden end against the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. When Jerusalem fell, it was destroyed, and the people either fled to Egypt or to slavery in Babylon. In adversity, these two groups established a lasting and powerful concept; the ability of Jews to retain their own identity. After the Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC, the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem. It was during this second exile that synagogues appeared an placed of Jewish worship, and the Torah took its lasting form; the holy book would be the great unifying agent of Judaism. The concept of the Messiah also entered Jewish tradition during the dark times of Babylonian exile. Category:Historical Periods